1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an ink ribbon use restriction unit provided to prevent improper use of an ink ribbon used for, for example, a video printer.
2. Description of Related Art
Color video printers, which print an image taken at that time on sealing photographic papers, have been popular in the field of, for example, amusement in recent years.
As a color video printer used in this field, for example, the printer of sublimation thermal printing are widely used, for example, three ink ribbons of yellow, cyan, and magenta are used and the respective color inks are thermally transferred on a photographic paper by means of a thermal head to print an image.
For example, the above-mentioned ink ribbon comprises a long vinyl sheet ribbon having a width corresponding to the vertical or horizontal size of a specified photographic paper, a supply spool on which a vinyl sheet ink ribbon is wound, and a winding spool for winding up the ink ribbon which has been used for printing, and an ink ribbon itself is fabricated in the form of a cartridge which is detachable to the printer. An ink cartridge usually has a printing capacity for printing, for example, about 200 sheets of photographic paper.
Some color video printer users use an ink cartridge until all the printable sheet portion of an ink ribbon is wound entirely on a winding spool and then rewind the used ink ribbon of the ink ribbon cartridge on a supply spool, and then reuse the used ink ribbon, with doing a foul trick by use of the above-mentioned structure of an ink ribbon cartridge.
Such reuse of an ink ribbon gives naturally an image, which is printed on a photographic paper, of poorer image quality than that of an image to be resulted from a fresh ink ribbon because ink of the reused ink ribbon is partially blanked when it has been used first.
The specific photographic paper which should be used for the color video printer is recommended to secure the good image quality and smooth paper feeding operation, however, some users who reuse a used ink ribbon cartridge often use the un-recommended photographic paper instead of the recommended photographic paper. In such case, the printed image quality becomes poorer further and in addition, for example, operational trouble such as that an ink ribbon is not peeled off smoothly from a photographic paper is caused often when ink is thermally transferred onto the photographic paper by means of a thermal head because a photographic paper which is not recommended is used.